The Arcadia Hotel fire occurred on December 3, 1913 in a flophouse on the corner of Washington and Laconia Streets in Boston's South End.

Fire personnel, police officers, and citizens also stretched life nets, which allowed a number of men to leave the building safely.

[3] A post-fire inspection of the building found that its heating plant was located in the cellar directly below the stairs and that there was no fire-proofing material between the dome of the boiler and the plastering over the laths of the stairway above it.

[4] Safety Engineering, which covered the fire in the December 1913 edition of the journal, cited the open stairway as the chief cause of death.

[3] On the front wall of every floor, red lights illuminated the words "fire escape" and arrows pointing north and south.

[4] Although state law required lodging houses to have fire extinguishers, the fact that none were used led investigators to believe that there were none in the hotel.

The Boston American cited the lack of a fire extinguisher and sprinkler system "which are cheap and handy enough to have in any building" as a "real cause" of the 28 deaths.

[3] A grand jury directed by Suffolk County District Attorney Joseph C. Pelletier investigated the fire, but could not find sufficient evidence for any criminal indictments.